My laptop is five years old and has been a pretty sad sight for the past year or two. The battery died, so I just keep it out, and I took out the floppy drive too (why bother?) so the front enclosure is just a big hole. This means I have to carry around the power brick with me.

Eventually my power brick started acting funny. I realized the cord was becoming unreliable after being folded sharply in my bag so many times. Now I have to wrap it tightly at a specific angle around the power brick to get any juice. If it unfolds or someone kicks or touches it, the power might (and often does) die instantly.

While screwing around on my laptop a few months ago, I began admiring the print of a painting on my roommate Steve's tall coffee mug. I slowly turned it around in my hand to look at all the details. Since it was a very tall mug, I couldn't see the half cup of remaining coffee, and this came pouring out all over my laptop. Both the trackpad and pointer stopped working, even after lots of cleaning.

Whatever, I can get by with just the keyboard. And I did.

But last night I accidentally dumped some Pepsi all over the left side, and I guess it went under the keyboard because after a few seconds it just powered off. It would get power for about 5 seconds, but never started the boot sequence, deciding to shut off instead. After taking stuff apart, cleaning, and putting it back together many times, nothing changed. Not having much else to do while at home, I did this for many hours. I figured maybe overnight something would dry up and it would start working again. Steve or anyone will tell you I'm one of the most optimistic dudes ever. I was really convinced that this problem would fix itself overnight. But I woke up this morning to face the harsh reality: still no power.

So Spiros came over bright and early and we drove up to the Internet Laboratory at Brown, screwdrivers, rubbing alcohol, and Q-tips in hand. It was time for a serious repair attempt.

Over the course of a couple hours I disassembled every little piece possible, breaking many in the process. If it detached, I detached it. I cleaned every circuit board with rubbing alcohol, even though I don't think this is recommended. To my delight, it booted up just fine once everything was back together.

So I'm writing this entry from my working laptop right now, but like I mentioned, there were some unfortunate casualties. My laptop is much more fragile than even before:

  • While fishing out a tiny screw that was rolling around with the screwdriver, I zapped the hell out of the motherboard after forgetting to unplug it. Whoops! Nothing important, I hope.
  • I broke the connector for the dual ribbon thing that connects the keyboard. So it takes about 20 minutes of concentration and coordination to put the keyboard back on.
  • The metal piece that encloses the hinge for the lid just broke completely in half. I think it was under more stress than normal because a couple years ago I unscrewed these from the frame. So I'm down to one hinge; the lid flops over at the slightest change in angle.

It's still pretty responsive and has a great screen, so these random accidents are gonna have to try harder if they really want me to get a new laptop...